At the Pac-12 championships last year, ASU men's swimmer Cameron Craig hit the pools and captured individual conference championship wins in the 100 freestyle and 200 freestyle, along with being named the Pac-12 Men's Championships Swimmer of the Meet.

He was only a freshman.

Now coming off a season where he was named the ASU Ron Johnson Most Valuable Swimmer, Craig is viewed as one of the main leaders to the team.

“I just love being a good role model for the others,”Craig said. “Although I am the youngest besides the most recent class of freshman, I like to motivate and help everyone to the best of my abilities.”

During this offseason, Craig has been alternating between head coachBob Bowman's group, improving endurance, and power lifting in the weight room with assistant coach Michael Joyce's group.

Senior ASU men's breaststroke specialist Christian Lorenz and freshman swimmer Grant House had high praise for the 6-foot-5-inch swimmer.

“Cam is definitely a specimen, and one big things that our trainers touch on is some people hit the genetic jackpot, and some don’t ... he is definitely on the jackpot side of the genetic lottery,” Lorenz said.

“Seeing him train in the weight room and seeing him swim and compete at practice, he's definitely just naturally on another level, and mix that with the work he puts in, he's going to be unstoppable.”

House agreed with this sentiment and said Craig played a signigicant role in his decision to join the program.

“He is a very big integral part of the team – he's one of the first headlines ASU has had as a program,” House said. “It's neat to train with him every day – that was a big appeal to me coming here. I’d actually known Cameron a couple years prior to here so that friendship kind of pulled me here too.”

“My favorite part of the college challenge was being there in general. I love to race and whenever there is an opportunity to race, I take it the first chance I get,” Craig said. “The experience was good – there was a lot of fast racing and it allowed me to see where I stood early in the season.”

With the season around the corner, expect Craig and the ASU swim and dive team to pursue some hefty goals.

“My individual goals for this season would be getting top three at NCAA this year in all my individual events,” Craig said. “Moving up in rankings at NCAA is a definite goal we have our eyes set on.”

Looking ahead ASU will have a busy weekend of competition when they face the University of Utah Utes Friday, Oct. 27 at 4:00 p.m. and Florida State on Saturday, Oct. 28 at 11:00 a.m. Both meets will be in Tempe.